"Get to Know" your ancestor"
A feature on Ordinance Ready!
By Karla Roberts, PP Ward Family History Consultant
Yesterday, I pulled up an ordinance ready on FamilySearch and asked for male baptism/confirmations that I plan to share with my nephew in the coming weeks. I received 4 names for the temple and looked to see which one was the oldest. I have noticed many 1900 records coming up lately but one of them was from a family living in the 1860's in the United States, so I decided to focus on Joseph Whitson and get to know him and find more sources to make him more real to me and my family. Joseph is my 1st cousin 5X removed on my mom's father's side of the family. There were no sources attached to his profile, so I had to dig deeper into his parents and siblings profiles. I was able to find a family tree on Ancestry that matched the parents and 3 children's names except for the mother's name on my record was Sally and it turned out to also be Sarah. To reference my facts, I looked at the source with the marriage record. I was unable to access the original doc on my home computer, but there was a note that said it was available at the Family History Center. I understand that the FHC has access to some of the websites not available free to the general public at home. I went to the Granite FHC and opened up Sally's profile and was able to click on her original marriage doc and verified that she was indeed listed as Sally and not Sarah. Sister Cook at the FHC told me that oftentimes Sarah and Sally were interchangeable in that era. Upon further searching on Ancestry, I found the 1860 Census with all 5 names together and I was able to update the birth years of all 3 children. The original info I had on the family in FS listed dates as "about 1860" or "about 1861". You can find birth years on all of the Census records. This search led to more info and sources with more on the youngest sister, Lydia's family including her husband's name and her death info too. Long story longer, I found a possible duplicate for mother Sally that was indeed Sarah and on that profile which showed a fact: AKA "Sally". The merge was simple to make and added more sources to mother Sarah's profile. This led me down the road to more info on more relatives which I was able to find and match last night before I went to bed. In the process I think I added 2-3 new names to FamilySearch which are now Temple Ready.
Today I went back to Joseph Whitson's profile, because I still only had one source, "the 1860 census" on him. Further searching brought up more Josephs, but not my Joseph. I decided to take another look at the Census and discovered I had added his birth year as 1860 when in fact it was 1857. I also noticed that all 3 children had been listed as being born in Indiana, when upon further examination of the Census, it turns out Joseph was born in Ill (Illinois not Indiana). When I corrected these two details on his profile FS popped up a "possible duplicate" for Joseph. The name was Joseph Reed Whitson! Hmmm....Reed is Sarah's Maiden name! It has to be a match. I started the process of merging and found the other record had Joseph's death info along with the names of his wife and children. So, when you merge two people you should look to see both names with their temple ordinance opportunities. If one has work done and the other does not, you should always save the record with the work already noted as done. Guess What! Joseph has already been baptized and endowed and sealed to his wife in the Timpanogos Temple in 2014-2015. There is one ordinance left that he is waiting for and that is a sealing to his parents which now I can reserve and take to the temple.
This just goes to show you why although "ordinance ready" is great to generate names for temple work, you can and should always "Get to know your Ancestor" FIRST.
I have learned just a few research techniques over the past few years that help me solve these kinds of puzzles. This is one of my favorite ways of discovering more relatives to take to the Temple. There are many different ways to find people in FamilySearch and Ancestry that I have yet to learn and be a part of. You can do it too!
